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I seem to be experiencing very erratic speed fluctuations with my new FairPoint DSL account. I just ran two tests of both download and upload. The download speeds were both similar, but the two upload speeds ranged from 1 Kbps to 90 Kbps. Does anyone know what would cause this wide variation only a couple of minutes apart? I ran the tests before signing in (oops), so I had to copy and paste the results.

I am just curious as to whether this is normal or indicates a problem. My email still doesn't work after three days, and the FairPoint people keep saying it seems to be a connection speed problem, but then they check the speed and it is fine. Thanks for any information concerning this. Also, when I try to open a new web page, the browser status bar will display "Waiting for whateversite.com" sometimes for as long as five minutes before it switches to "Connecting". At other times, it will bring the page right up. I don't know if this is related to the speed problem.

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Wow, Debbie... you've got a problem. 4 Kbps... but then you got a decent score a minute later.

Do you feel that it's the connection itself or something screwy with your computer? Give us system specifics, like OS and browser... some more details on any home networking... we'll help you figure it out.

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Hi CA3LE. I don't really know what's happening, but right now I am thinking that my dial-up was faster at least in connecting to sites, if not downloading them. I just tried to run the upload test again. It started and ran and ran until I finally got the message "The connection has timed out. The server at testmy.net is taking too long to respond." I know some sites can occasionally be too busy, but this seems to happen way too often, more so than with my dial-up.

As for system specifics, I am running Ubuntu Lucid Lynx with Firefox 3.63. I am connecting one desktop computer through a wired Linksys router. If you think something is wrong on my end, I could try a different setup. I could disconnect the router and connect the computer directly to the DSL modem, use a different browser, use Debian which I have on another partition, or try connecting with my very old laptop either directly or through the router. Please let me know if you think any of the above would help to try to figure out what the problem is or is not.

I am going to call it a day now, as I have fought with this long enough, but I will check back in the morning. Thanks.

I cannot even send this reply. The status bar gets stuck on "Waiting for testmy.net..." until I finally hit Stop, wait, and try again. After I try enough times, hopefully it will go through.

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...It started and ran and ran until I finally got the message "The connection has timed out. The server at testmy.net is taking too long to respond." I know some sites can occasionally be too busy, but this seems to happen way too often, more so than with my dial-up.

That should only be on rare occasion. You should never see a message like that for TestMy. Because this is a benchmark I have to be on top of the server performance...

As for system specifics, I am running Ubuntu Lucid Lynx with Firefox 3.63. I am connecting one desktop computer through a wired Linksys router. If you think something is wrong on my end, I could try a different setup. I could disconnect the router and connect the computer directly to the DSL modem, use a different browser, use Debian which I have on another partition, or try connecting with my very old laptop either directly or through the router. Please let me know if you think any of the above would help to try to figure out what the problem is or is not.

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Okay, are you ready for a mystery? I am not sure if this has to do with speed or something else. I have two webmail accounts that have previously worked on my dial-up and a new one from FairPoint. Since I got connected to DSL, none of them work. One old account just hangs forever when I try to send an email, supposedly waiting for the mail server. I waited over ten minutes for it today before I gave up. When I hit Send on the second one, it hangs for a little bit and then tries to download a script called compose.php to my computer. I assume that is the script that is supposed to send the email, but it is apparently not parsing. Fairpoint webmail also hangs on waiting for the mail server, but after a few minutes, my newly composed message disappears into a black hole. It never shows up in either my sent box or inbox.

I was beginning to think something was broken with my browser on the desktop computer, so I drove down to the public library with my laptop to use their wifi. I sent myself some test messages there to and from all three webmail accounts, and all three worked fine. Now I am back home with the same laptop with the same operating system and same browser plugged directly into the FairPoint modem with the network cable they gave me, and all three webmail accounts are having the same problems they had on the desktop computer.

I think this test eliminates the possibility of a problem with my operating system, browser, or router. So what is left? Brand new modem or phone lines? Something on FairPoint's servers? Can the mail be going at a different speed from the rest of the internet? Is the email so bad because it has to upload rather than download and I am having problems with upload speed? I have a lot of questions, but no answers. Thanks for any insight you may have into this.

I just waited over five minutes for this reply to be sent, and am trying again. I stopped this page from loading and ran the upload speed test again---4Kbps. Something is definitely wrong.

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I tried traceroute to testmy.net and google.com both with domain names and IP addresses, and all came back as "unknown host". I think I am being blocked somewhere---maybe by FairPoint? I ever tried as root user, but that made no difference.

As far as other things I have done, I have not been going through the router since I first realized I had a speed problem. I have tried both the desktop and laptop computers connected directly to the DSL modem. I unplugged both of my phones and the dial-up modem to eliminate any possible noise from them. I have tried different telephone and network cables. I plugged the DSL modem into a jack that is about a foot from where the telephone service enters my house and tried to connect from there, so the signal would have a shorter distance to travel. Nothing made a difference. Except for that one good test, my upload speed remains at 4Kbps, with one reading actually down to 3Kbps.

For comparison, I ran the upload speed test while connected through my dial-up modem and got an upload of 2Kbps. That is using all of the same hardware, software, and phone lines. And on dial-up, all of my email accounts work, and while web pages take much longer to download, they hardly ever hang on the initial connection. Until this is resolved, I am back to using the dial-up for email and also for paying bills online.

You can clear the hosts file , this is a file that contains blocked IP addresses and or hosts that are known or chosen to be bad.

You should download first spybot S&D http://www.safer-net...org/index2.html , once installed , you can navigate within the advanced tab , and insert there blocked host file , works very well. Update there data as the install process requests.

As well as the file getting massive after a while ,the hosts file can cause slow downs due to having to be checked through each time you request a page. But that is generally only in systems that have been around for a while and used a lot.

Start . run > type in without the quotes " %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc " right click on the ( usually upper left icon , or the " hosts " ) and open with notepad , make sure not to check the box that says " always open with " .

You will see the start of the file looks like this..........

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost[/html]

[/font][/color]

[color=#333333][font=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][b]

[/b][/font][/color]Then hundreds possibly of IP / hosts entries. Delete everything below what you see above. Then go into spybot and insert there hosts file data.

[font=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][size=2] You might also check that your browser has not been compromised and a proxy put in place. By going through " internet options>connections>lan settings make sure nothing is set there , unless of course you need or want it there. If there is , delete it and un check " use a proxy server for your lan ..............."[/size][/font]

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Hi mudmanc4. Thanks for trying to help, but as stated in one of my earlier posts, I am on Linux, not Windows. I have not used Windows since Windows 98. I believe spybot is for Windows. My hosts files are fine, and I have tried the DSL on two different computers and with three browsers. My dial-up account, which I fortunately didn't cancel yet, still works okay, as it has for the past two years. The problems I am having are strictly with the new FairPoint DSL account that was set up last Wednesday.

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Hi mudmanc4. Thanks for trying to help, but as stated in one of my earlier posts, I am on Linux, not Windows. I have not used Windows since Windows 98. I believe spybot is for Windows. My hosts files are fine, and I have tried the DSL on two different computers and with three browsers. My dial-up account, which I fortunately didn't cancel yet, still works okay, as it has for the past two years. The problems I am having are strictly with the new FairPoint DSL account that was set up last Wednesday.

I had a not paying attention end to my day yesterday, completely needed to step away from the keyboard lol

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I got to talk to a supervisor at FairPoint today. I told him about the speed tests I ran on your site, and he seemed interested. You might be getting some new traffic from the phone company. Anyway, when all was said and done, he said it was unusual, but sounded like the problem could be in the phone lines outside. This area is noted for noisy phone connections whenever it rains. He said someone should be able to check the lines in the next few days. Then I will be going away for a couple of days, so I think I will put this discussion on hold until I get back. I am hoping my connection will have gotten better by then. Thanks for helping me to figure this out.

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I got to talk to a supervisor at FairPoint today. I told him about the speed tests I ran on your site, and he seemed interested. You might be getting some new traffic from the phone company. Anyway, when all was said and done, he said it was unusual, but sounded like the problem could be in the phone lines outside. This area is noted for noisy phone connections whenever it rains. He said someone should be able to check the lines in the next few days. Then I will be going away for a couple of days, so I think I will put this discussion on hold until I get back. I am hoping my connection will have gotten better by then. Thanks for helping me to figure this out.

Thanks for helping spread the word. This site has always been word of mouth and I really appreciate when people do my advertising for me. Let me know how it turns out. Don't be a stranger.

- CA3LE

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as a past DSL user i have a fair amount of experience with DSL modems, it sounds like it's a bad line to me. i've had issues like this with my DSL before and it was due to having a filter go bad or the line going bad. unfortunately they bury most phone lines now so it could be hard for them to change it depending on where the tap is... having a tech out is the best thing you can do At the moment hopfully they will see the issues when they test the line

the only other thing it could possibly be is the modem, at least that i can think of... and thank God your running a flavor of linux that rules out about 10,000 possibile things it could be

~ Triran

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i too have ubuntu...and love it...i'm not sure which one i have tho...i sometimes get that "connecting" to whatever website deal you talked about...doubt it has anything to do with our os but what a coincidence that we both get that and we both have ubuntu...sometimes it just times out

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i too have ubuntu...and love it...i'm not sure which one i have tho...i sometimes get that "connecting" to whatever website deal you talked about...doubt it has anything to do with our os but what a coincidence that we both get that and we both have ubuntu...sometimes it just times out

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Okay, I'm back, but I haven't yet found out if FairPoint has checked the lines. Here is a summary of a dozen upload speed tests I did over about two and a half hours.

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 10:50:12 pm 727 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 10:49:30 pm 4 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 10:26:02 pm 708 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 10:24:34 pm 31 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 10:12:15 pm 29 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 9:51:00 pm 709 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 9:50:06 pm 712 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 9:49:10 pm 29 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 9:20:57 pm 711 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 9:20:12 pm 4 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 8:29:36 pm 730 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 8:28:50 pm 4 Kbps

It looks like my connection is either fast or slow, with nothing in between. I wish I could find a pattern in all of this. Web pages still hang and none of my webmail works. Could it be a problem with the modem?

Okay, I'm back, but I haven't yet found out if FairPoint has checked the lines. Here is a summary of a dozen upload speed tests I did over about two and a half hours.

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 10:50:12 pm 727 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 10:49:30 pm 4 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 10:26:02 pm 708 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 10:24:34 pm 31 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 10:12:15 pm 29 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 9:51:00 pm 709 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 9:50:06 pm 712 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 9:49:10 pm 29 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 9:20:57 pm 711 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 9:20:12 pm 4 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 8:29:36 pm 730 Kbps

Mon Aug 08 2011 @ 8:28:50 pm 4 Kbps

It looks like my connection is either fast or slow, with nothing in between. I wish I could find a pattern in all of this. Web pages still hang and none of my webmail works. Could it be a problem with the modem?

It almost looks like that IS the issue to me.

If you notice, you got better results IMMEDIATELY after a test. It looks like your ISP is either opening a real connection through the internet, or you have something that is caching the tests.

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...the only other thing it could possibly be is the modem, at least that i can think of...

~ Triran

Besides replacing the modem, is there any way to check this? I have been poking around in the pages for the modem setup, including looking at the log files. The same few lines keep repeating, with time stamps varying between several minutes and about an hour apart.